The following is a statement by Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn regarding the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling on costs incurred by the Department to respond to open records requests.

“We will comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Clearly, the ruling has immediate consequences, as the costs of replying to the open records requests of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – including their requests within the last week for more than 61,000 reports, all of which require redaction under state law – will for now be borne by the taxpayers of the City of Milwaukee.

We do note that the Supreme Court did not easily dismiss the City’s arguments, but indicated that the legislature’s oversight in not including redaction costs in the list of costs that can be charged to a requestor must be remedied by the legislature.”